Australia: a country and continent where extremes meet, where life and death are very close to each other, seen through the eyes of a Murrungun Aboriginal whose people have been on the lands for thousands of years. That’s the story that Balang T.E. Lewis narrates in Australia’s Great Wild North.
The movie is playing now at IMAX, and it honours Lewis’ legacy: the actor and musician, well-known in Australia, passed away in 2018 as the movie was in its final stages of post-production.
First of all, if you’re not familiar with Australian dialect, you certainly will be after watching this movie. Having been to Australia before, this just made me feel connected to the place and I felt the authenticity of the story from this land and its people. Lewis narrates the story of a just-hatched crocodile, which is his totem, while the camera follows the river to flow over red rock to burst into giant waterfalls. Most of the scenes are filmed on sacred Aboriginal land, which makes it very special to see.
What struck me most is when the film shows the importance of an ancient reptile bird called a cassowary. This bird looks like it’s from a different time, and it helps to keep the land alive by eating from trees’ fallen fruit to assist in the germination process. Without the cassowary, lots of seeds wouldn’t be able to germinate, therefore the forest as the Aboriginal peoples know it would die. This once again shows how very much interconnected things on this planet are and how important each species is in order for other species to survive and grow. As Lewis says in the movie, we don’t own the land; we belong to it. It’s an important message from his people to all of us.
The movie has a lot of big-screen pictures of Australian forest and powerful rivers as it follows the species living among them. It’s more than that, though: it’s about connection to the land and the story it tells, a story told by Aboriginal drawings in caves on the sacred land the movie was filmed on.
Bushfires are another big topic—as we all know, Australia is a hot and humid continent and it has to deal with a lot of fires due to lightning each year. The Aboriginal people of the land actually have a way to prevent the bush from completely burning down by doing what’s called “cold fires.” I recommend you listen carefully while Lewis explains in the movie why and how they do it, as this is a skill which is lost in much of society but kept as knowledge in the Aboriginal peoples’ culture.
Australia’s Great Wild North is an educational movie with lots of interesting facts, plus it’s a nice nod to the legacy of Lewis.